It is a tricky business, this business of being a professional artist! You might think I spend every day in the studio making art prints all day long.

Sadly, the reality is a little bit different.

Any artist trying to make a sustainable income from what we do walks a fine line between the time we spend creating and the time we spend on social media, maintaining a website, talking to galleries, writing blogs and newsletters and general admin all of which is an absolute pre-requisite in order to build an audience of potential and actual customers. Much as I love what I do for a living, at times it can be very frustrating trying to carve out time to actually create.

However … I have managed to get some time in the studio recently to begin a new body of work. I have two exhibitions coming up this summer. I will be exhibiting at the new Eastgate Studios and Gallery, Beverley, East Yorkshire from the 2nd July to 13th August and at the Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery also from the 2nd July until 4th September.

So here is a sneak peek at some of the work I’ve started.

New print from a recycled collagraph plate - a small insight into parts of the process

I began this project recycling an old collagraph plate - a moonlit landscape featuring a curlew on a fence post - you can just see the remnants of the curlew. I added in a stone wall, the sea and a headland to the plate with a separate plate of a curlew in flight. Sometimes I use just one small additional plate, like the flying curlew, in conjunction with the main collagraph plate but I might use more than one depending on the composition I want. I have a little flock of curlews and herons ready for use. Other British coastal birds will be added in time.

New print from a new collagraph plate

The next couple of images are from a brand new plate I’ve made. I’m not entirely happy with it. I wouldn’t normally let you see this but I’m adding it in so you can see that from time to time, things don’t work out the way I’d like and I have to return to the drawing board. The ideas I had on the way I wanted to print the foreground just didn’t work out the way I envisaged so I have to have a rethink. I may have to start again - watch this space.

Revisiting An Existing Plate That I’ve Not Printed From In A While

Next, I returned to an existing plate which some of you will recognise as ‘Lone Tree Under A Starry Sky’. I’ve taken a very different approach this time using two very different colour palettes.

On my first crack at it, I decided to use a really strong colour palette of warm yellows, hot pinks and purples and deep blues. The application of ink is much looser and more painterly in the monotype layers of ink. The result is full of drama and it really brings out the texture on the collagraph plate.

On my second crack at it, I dialled the colour palette right down. The colours are lighter and more translucent versions of the first print combining them with a soft wintery grey rather than deep blues. The result conveys a wintery light in the early morning to the same landscape image.

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